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Experience (or Re-live) #TMC16, Virtually

The #MTBoS (Math Twitter Blogosphere) is an amazing community of math educators who share ideas and resources freely with others through blogs and Twitter. It is a strong online community where we are constantly learning from one another and growing better, together.

Twitter Math Camp 2012

Twitter Math Camp (TMC), an amazing “grass roots” conference for teachers, by teachers, was born when we decided to finally meet in person five years ago in 2012. This initial small meeting of 37 teachers (#TMC12) has grown to a conference of over 200 in just five short years. I have been to all five, as it is the one conference that I do not miss, and it is one of my favorite experiences of the year!

I love Twitter Math Camp so much that I want to share it with everyone. And I want you to get to experience it, even if you couldn’t be there this year to experience it with me! Luckily, it is TWITTER Math Camp, so almost everything can be accessed online!
Here is your how to guide to virtually “attending” TMC16 online. The best thing is, you don’t have to decide which amazing session to attend (out of 12!) during each block, you get to read about them all! In fact, I will be virtually attending all 11 sessions every block that I did not get to attend because I was in a different session!

1) Search the #TMC16 hashtag on Twitter and read the tweets. You will find amazing quotes, pictures, and most importantly links to many of the great resources presented at the conference. Note: There are a ton of tweets so it will take a while to read through. In fact, there were so many tweets that #TMC16 was trending multiple times per day during the three-day conference. Additionally, since it is a Twitter conference, the teachers are constantly communicating with each other through Twitter, all using the #TMC16 hashtag. So you will see many tweets that are not resources as well.

2) Go to the Twitter Math Camp website. Here you can read more about Twitter Math Camp. After that, I would read the TMC16 Complete Program with Descriptions so you will know what sessions you want to learn all about. There are a ton of sessions so take notes! You will need them when you access the TMC Wiki to get the session materials (see #3). The Twitter Math Camp website will also contain the #TMC16 Archive, which is all of the videos recorded of the conference as well as many reflection blog posts by other teachers about the conference. Many math educators blog about their experience. These blog posts are excellent as several teachers will give specifics and details about each session to supplement the raw materials that you can find.

3)Watch the videos from #TMC16. (They are all not up yet, but will be). The keynote speakers and the “My Favorites” were recorded each day, plus a few extraneous moments. “My Favorites” are 5 – 15 minute mini-talks teachers give about a favorite thing from their classroom. The “official” videos were taken by Glenn Waddell. You can also watch the videos I took with Periscope. Periscope is fun because viewers can heart moments they love and write comments, all of which you can view when watching the replay of the video. I discovered that I could sketch on the video while people were talking! So, I had some fun with that too. I am working to put all of the videos in one place permanently, but haven’t had time yet. Also, I had never used Periscope before this conference, so my first videos are untitled and the orientation is vertical. Sorry! Thank you to Sam for showing me Scopedown so I could download all of my Periscopes before they disappeared! However, for some reason the orientation is all messed up when I downloaded it. Ugh.

4) Check out the Twitter Math Camp Wiki for the resources! The TMC wiki contains most of the materials from each of the sessions. It is packed with links, pdfs, and sometimes even the presenter slides! Bonus: It also contains all of the information from every Twitter Math Camp session since it was created in 2012. Be patient, as some presenters have not had a chance to upload their files. You can also tweet a presenter and I am sure they would be happy to send material to you.

FINALLY, once you are all done “attending” TMC16, you should share your #1TMCThing on Twitter. This is the ONE thing that you learned from TMC that you would like to implement this year. Please tweet it out, and don’t be shy! Think of TMC16 as an online school. You have earned your virtual certificate and should definitely tweet along with us. Because you are one of us. If you are still not convinced, here is Shelli’s tweet. She was not able to attend TMC this year, but followed the hashtag during while TMC16 was in session. She even discovered and shared her #1tmcThing. Missed you Shelli. ❤

Going forward, if you are NOT on Twitter, interacting with math educators, you should be. So sign up now before you miss any more of the amazing things math educators are doing there! I’ve grown more in the past few years than I have in my entire career. If you want to meet more of us, the MTBoS directory is a great place to start! Follow people on Twitter. Follow @TMathC. Follow me at @jreulbach. Say Hi to me! Ask questions! We will help you! Search hashtags and use hashtags when you tweet. It will be life changing.